As the old habit of placing ‘crocks’ in patio pots to protect plants is
revealed to be harmful, Val Bourne reflects on a long tradition of gardening
myth

Just like my grandmother, I’m a mad and fanatical gardener. More than 60 years ago, she opened up a new world to me, when we gardened together early in the morning before the rest of the world stirred.

Every plant came alive for me, as my Victorian grandmother used the old names she grew up with. Comfrey was always knitbone, achillea was staunch grass and pulmonaria was lung wort.

All were thought worthy healers, but I learnt to fear the stately aconitum, or wolf’s bane, that towered above me. This was poisonous enough to kill a wolf, although at the time I was too young to know that the beasts had disappeared from Britain a thousand years or more ago.

As a result, too, of those early morning sessions, I cannot look at Lady’s Mantle or Alchemilla mollis as a wanton self-seeder to be despised, as so many gardeners do. Instead I think of the mysterious alchemists who inspired the name and were said to collect the tiny pearls of water that seeped out round the lacy edges, a process known as guttation, in order to create gold.

Today, much gardening mythology still lingers. Until this week, for instance, we’ve all been faithfully keeping our old pots and breaking them up before placing them in the bottom of our containers. Now, scientists have proved that's completely wrongheaded. Excess water moves into the coarser material (such as crocks and gravel) once the soil is saturated, thereby creating a watery sump that freezes in the bottom of your pot - killing off your plant’s roots.

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Most gardeners still believe that peonies cannot be moved, for which we can blame the ancients. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher, revered the peony as a magical plant named after Paeon, Greek physician to the Gods. If you went anywhere near it with a fork in daylight, Theophrastus believed that a woodpecker would peck out your eyes before you even blinked.

Pliny faithfully reiterated this mumbojumbo in his Naturalis Historia (published AD 77–79) and it came down the generations, whispered in the potting shed, and it still persists today. My own peonies have been moved on many occasions, however, although it’s essential to get the tubers just two inches under the soil. Bury them any deeper and they’ll refuse to flower.

The Roman writer Columella (AD 4–70) was another to apparently write about vegetable growing without ever getting his hands dirty. He is responsible for the theory that leek plants must have their tops and roots shortened before planting: “As for the leek which you wish to form a large head, you must take care that, before you transplant it and re-set it, you cut off all the small roots and shear off the tops of fibres.”

Cutting off the roots might make it easier to get them into the holes made with your dibber, but it’s akin to removing people’s teeth to make it easier to get more in your mouth: good in theory, but flawed in practice. Thankfully Joy Larkcom, the Goddess of Vegetable Growing, firmly reputed the idea in 2002, quoting some Belgian research that had shown that this practice reduced yields. People still do it though.

Treat them mean seems to be a theme - there’s a mad modern myth that agapanthus need to be starved to flower well. If you’ve ever been to South Africa you can’t fail to notice the rugged landscape and equally robust climate.

The wettish winters of Cape Town deliver 450mm of rainfall during winter, half of Manchester’s total maybe, but agapanthus (like triffids) sit in damp ditches, by water courses and on wet slopes on the western half of The Cape. Treat them, therefore, as would an old lady her cat. Feed them well in the growing season with high potash tomato food and they will reward you by producing loads of flower.

Perhaps the nuttiest thing of all is planting potatoes, our most frost-tender outdoor vegetable, on Good Friday despite the fact that this moveable feast can occur from the third week of March when snow and frost still lurk. It’s all down to rotten timing, for the potato was introduced from the High Andes into England in 1585, a time of religious suspicion and insecurities.

Potatoes were regarded as the devil’s food because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. The God-fearing Irish, who relied on the productive potato, hedged their bets by sprinkling the tubers with Holy Water before planting them on the most religious day of all. Far better to plant your potatoes once spring is really here and this will depend on where you live. Mid-April is best for many.

The first popular gardening book published in England in 1577, The Gardener’s Labyrinth by Thomas Hill, kept the rumour mill grinding. Writing as Didymus Mountain, Hill quoted Pliny, Theophrastus and Columella, describing his book as a “most briefe and pleasaunte treatyse, teachynge how to dresse, sowe, and set a garden”.

Later books reproduced Hill’s work to the letter and so the ideas rumbled on. As a result, superstition, misinformation and strange practices are still with us today - and they’ll probably persist. For many who write about gardening, I fear, rarely handle a plant.